University laboratory is determined to combat theft on the Internet

Stealing money has never been easier thanks to the Internet, researchers believe a university laboratory in the U.S. state of Florida, dedicated to designing programs to curb cyber crimes and make safer the Net

Launched three years ago, the Research Laboratory of Electronic Crimes of the Florida State University, aims to create technology to combat crimes such as theft of personal data, which lead to theft of money from credit cards and bank accounts.

According to the researchers, these crimes continue to grow by giving internet facilities to act at a distance and without a trace.

"With an internet connection anyone can operate from anywhere on the planet, without using his own name, no address, no nothing," said Sudhir Aggarwal, director of the center, known as 'E-Crime Lab'. "Against the electronic crimes are no rules, Internet is the Wild West ... We try to develop software tools that could help security agencies to investigate, "he said.

The laboratory has developed two different software systems to identify criminals who act hidden behind the screen of the global network, and tries to develop a mechanism far more effective than spam filters to protect against these crimes internet.

"These are not the crimes of the future are the crimes of this, unfortunately," said the expert. "I think the electronic crimes continue to grow until we find at least one way to mitigate Internet and a system that can stop them," said Aggarwal.

One program that the university laboratory called 'Without Mask' (Unmask), identifying the premises from where it left an e-mail for illegal deceptive (phishing email).

A test for PhD students, working with that project, allowing to trace an email for purposes of deception and find its origins in Guatemala City, said Aggarwal.

Other software created is a bankruptcy-passwords ( 'Password Breaker') would allow, in an investigation, police and security agencies, and in some cases, corporations have access to protected information.

The system functions as a kind of guessed passwords and has a high degree of effectiveness "because people do not really create good passwords, especially because he can not remember," Aggarwal told.

The 'E-Crime Lab', which began work in January 2007 and is on average seven students per year concentrated on development projects, receives research funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and collaborates with the Department of Justice of Florida and the U.S. Center White Collar Crimes (NWCCC).

The computer security company Sophos said this week in the last year there was an increase "alarming" theft of personal information through social networks like Twitter or Facebook. "Users spend more time on social networks to share valuable and important information, and hackers smell where they will make money," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.